'Cramped' houses row over Philippine typhoon survivors

A girl sits among debris of destroyed houses in Tacloban, Leyte province, on Dec 7, 2013. International aid agencies have criticised a Philippine government plan to move homeless survivors of the country's deadliest typhoon into "cramped" temporary shelters, officials said on Wednesday, Jan 8, 2014. -- FILE PHOTO: AFP

MANILA (AFP) - International aid agencies have criticised a Philippine government plan to move homeless survivors of the country's deadliest typhoon into "cramped" temporary shelters, officials said on Wednesday.

The issue has disrupted the Super Typhoon Haiyan rehabilitation effort as the government halted further construction of bunkhouses so they could be redesigned, they said.

"There were some concerns that it (the room assigned to each family) was too cramped," President Benigno Aquino's spokesman Edwin Lacierda told reporters.

The typhoon left nearly 8,000 people dead or missing on November 8 as it laid waste to an area the size of Portugal, wrecking about 1.2 million homes.